Abolish Human Abortion has posted this graphic (click to enlarge):
AHA explains its position on clinic closures here. It lists several reasons, all of which I think are either incorrect or wrong-headed:
1. It’s wrong to brag about clinic closures:
We just don’t turn these happy occasions into triumphalist claims about the success of whatever the current legislative battle is….
2. It’s wrong to fundraise off of clinic closures:
We just don’t… use them in our fundraising pitches, or claim that if you send us $1000, we will close down the rest by the same means.
3. Certain reasons for closing clinics are wrong:
[W]hen pro-lifers shut down a clinic because it isn’t very clean (as opposed to shutting it down because it is a place where children are brutally sacrificed), the abortion industry simply improves that clinic. Or they open a better, more modern, more attractive clinic down the street…. But what they are not reporting is the fact that stat of the art killing centers that service much larger areas are opening up in the place of the grubby, small hellhole that was closed.
4. Regulating clinics has the opposite effect of making Planned Parenthood and the abortion industry stronger:
What we are seeing is the creation of a much more sophisticated, governmentally-funded, Planned Parenthood-monopolized abortion industry which is learning to meet all the criteria set for them by the pro-life movement, all the while still getting away with murder….
There are many reasons and causes behind a particular clinic’s being shut down, and some of the reasons for which a clinic is shut end up preserving the lifespan of the legality of abortion and make its practice more difficult to abolish in the future.
5. The abortion industry makes money off of these efforts:
The abortion industry has even learned to use the small victories of the pro-life movement in their own fundraisers. Letters and emails requesting “Help to save the right to abortion!” go out as often as the “Help us save the babies” letters that we all receive.
6. The wrong people get credit for closing clinics for the wrong reasons:
We actually think that all sorts of good work (by both pro-lifers and abolitionists) goes into the closing of abortion clinics and that it is not just the politicians and pro-life industry leaders who deserve credit for their closings. Indeed, we tend to believe that killing centers are most effectively shut down by the work of local anti-abortionists who dry up the financial stability of a “clinic” by making their abortion unthinkable and unnecessary (by way of assistance and agitation).
7. It all comes back to the virtue of “immediatism” vs “incrementalism”:
There is a difference in strategy here, and it is OK to be different (ie, we all hate abortion). We just happen to believe that the clinic-by-clinic or increment-by-increment strategy and focus doesn’t go to the heart of the matter, the root of the tree. That is, we just don’t believe that the pro-life movement’s strategy in this regard will ever lead to abolition.
Semantics aside, the number of abortion clinics has declined from a high of 2,042 in 1996 to 787 currently - by 61%. In particular, the past three years has seen a drastic reduction of 73. Per Bloomberg, pro-lifers are responsible for half of those closures, and implosions and decreased demand for the other half:
New laws are responsible for roughly half of the closures, while declining demand, industry consolidation, and crackdowns on unfit providers have also contributed to the drop.
I would add that several closures for the latter reasons are also due to pro-life diligence in alerting authorities to irregulaties and also dogging regulatory agencies to do something.
The number of abortions has declined,from a peak of 1.6 million annually in 1990 to 1.21 million in 2008. This was during a time when the U.S. population increased by 22%, from 249 million to 304 million. The rate of abortion has declined from 29.3 per every 1,000 in 1981 to 19.6 in 2008. While this is due to efforts by a whole lot of pro-life efforts in a whole lot of areas, disappearing abortion clinics from every street corner must logically account for something.
No pro-lifer is happy that even one baby is aborted, but the bottom line on this is AHA thinks attempts to regulate abortion clinics are wrong, and that if any focus is made on closing clinics, it should be at the clinic itself “by way of assistance and agitation.”
Do you agree or disagree?
Differences aside, I appreciate AHA’s willingness to let me post its graphic for the purposes of discussion. AHA has provided more links on the topic of immediatism vs incrementalism here, here, and here.
Please be sure to take the poll…
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[HT: Leslie of The Passionate Pro-Lifer Turned Abolitionist]
by LauraLoo
Jill Stanek is a nurse turned speaker, columnist and blogger, a national figure in the effort to protect both preborn and postborn innocent human life.